Sometimes, it seems like some people just won't learn from the past. Such appears to be the case with Microsoft, as the European Commission announced this week that they will begin another investigation into Microsoft's anti-competition practices, just months after having closed the last.

The new investigation — spawned by complaints from Opera Software — will look into Microsoft's practice of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, as well as Internet Explorer's lack of web standards compliance. This investigation is only the most recent, however, in a series of antitrust investigations against Microsoft, a series that stretches back more than a decade. The latest investigation mirrors one of the very first against the company, the now-infamous U.S. antitrust investigation sparked by Netscape's complaints of Microsoft's bundling Internet Explorer with Windows.

For now, it's uncertain how the investigation may proceed, and for that matter, how long it could take to see results — the Commission's handed down its ruling in the previous case in 2004, but Microsoft fought three years before finally agreeing to comply. The latest reports say Microsoft plans to "cooperate" with the investigation, but what definition of "cooperate" they have in mind remains to be seen.

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